


Help Wanted

by SegaBarrett



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Babysitting, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Some angst, cuteness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 07:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11709771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Freddie finds himself in the unexpected task of watching Anatoly's daughters.





	Help Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Chess and I make no money from this.

Freddie Trumper curled his lips back and let out a sigh, one that seemed particularly tuned to annoy Anatoly like nothing else.

“You know this happens every year, Freddie. If I want to stay in America, I have to go renew my paperwork.”

“But usually, you leave me with Florence. Or the Lifetime Movie Network. Or sleep.”

“And now… against my own better judgment, I am leaving you with my two daughters. Who I love more than life itself.”

Freddie put his hands on his hips and let out a noise of protest. 

“You don’t love your life all that much, Anatoly.”

Anatoly rolled his eyes. 

“This house needs to be standing when I get back, Freddie. That is all that I ask.”

***

The last time Freddie had found himself flanked by two girls under the age of thirteen, they had been shoving him off a slide made out of some kind of life-size Lincoln Logs (he still had at least one of the resulting bruises).

Katya, at twelve, was the older of the two – she had blonde hair which she wore, generally, all in one braid. Her younger sister, Sonya, was ten, and a good deal tinier, gifted with a headful of curly hair that mimicked her father’s perfectly. 

“So,” Freddie began, feeling his throat go dry and his pulse begin to quicken (Kids? What did he know about kids? He hadn’t known anything about them when he was one himself!). “What do you guys want to do while we wait for A… for your dad to get back?”

Maybe they would just want to put on one of these infernal TV shows and Freddie could get back to doing what he had been doing beforehand. Which had been nothing, honestly, but that was beside the point.

“We’re bored,” Sonya spoke up. “Can we go to the mall?”

Yeah, that’s what he wanted, to be crushed in between hundreds of people all running over each other to try and get some sale at Boscov’s. It was making his pulse race just thinking about it. 

“No. Let’s find something here to do.”

He kicked up his feet on the table and wondered what he would want to be doing at that age. Playing Chess, of course – there hadn’t been that much else that had interested him, even then. 

He stood up and walked to the china closet in the corner of the room. One open drawer later and he had taken out the battered and faded chess set that he had spent hours playing with when he had been a child of their age.

“Do you know how to play?” he asked, and the girls looked at each other and shook their heads.

Sonya looked disinterested, but Katya met his gaze.

“Teach us?”

***

“So I can capture you here?”

“No, only like this for the bishop.” 

Freddie realized with surprise that he was not feeling frustrated, or impatient. They didn’t learn as quickly as he had – and Sonya kept chewing on her hair instead of focusing – but there was an odd rush in teaching the game to someone – two someones – who wasn’t already obsessed by it.  
He wondered why Anatoly hadn’t taught them himself.

Maybe he didn’t think they would be interested, or perhaps he worried about them becoming like him, all-consumed by the game to where they could think of nothing else.

But such a mind was rare, not often taught, usually borne instead out of hardship, pain and abandonment, or at least it had in Freddie’s case. He couldn’t even remember what had made him first pick up the board. 

“Checkmate,” Freddie told the girls as he moved his piece into position. 

“That means you win?” Katya asked, and he nodded. She leaned in and scratched her chin. “So this is what you do, all the time? And our father, too?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, now that I’m not champion anymore, it’s…” What was it now, exactly? Had he figured that out with the year of Global Television, being a pawn in someone else’s master play and globetrotting around the world to be a spectator in his own sport? And now Anatoly’s… whatever this was. “Once you get something into your blood, though, it’s all you can think about.”

“What about sex?” Sonya blurted out, and both Katya and Freddie cocked their heads to stare at her.

“You’ve gathered the important English words, I see,” Freddie mused. “Like I said. When something is your passion, when it’s… it’s all you can think about. Everything else is second. It fades away.”

“Sounds boring.” Sonya stood up from her spot and moved to sit back down on the couch, scooping up the remote and turning on the television.

Katya leaned forward, propping up her chin and looking across the table.

“I get it,” she said simply, before getting up and moving as well.

***

Freddie received a call around five to inform him that Anatoly had decided to go to a play with Florence, and could he be kind enough to watch the kids until they fell asleep?

Freddie informed him that his children had already been killed and eaten, but Anatoly simply laughed.

“I have faith in you, Freddie, even if you don’t have any faith in yourself.”

“A dangerous combination,” Freddie reminded him.

***

“Sing us a song, Freddie!” Sonya declared, climbing into the bed besides her sister with a thump that sent Katya in the air slightly. Freddie dragged his hand over his face. 

“A song?”

“A song, a song!” Sonya said again, clapping her hands. “We always get a song, or we can’t sleep!”

Katya nodded, though the whole thing sounded a lot more like a threat than a statement of fact.

“What kind of song? I don’t know any S… Russian songs,” Freddie told them, rubbing at his neck. Anatoly hadn’t prepared him for the necessity of song in this whole endeavor. 

“Any song,” Katya replied, “We’re not picky.”

“Okay, okay. Lay back down, both of you.” Freddie cleared his throat, cursed his nerves, and began to sing:  
 _“My mind is clearer now,  
at last, all too well,   
I can see, where we all, soon will be…”_

By the bridge, both of them were fast asleep against their pillows and in each other’s arms. Freddie wondered what it would be like to have a sibling, someone to have played with, someone to have schemed and planned with. 

He wondered if it would have made him any different, or if it would have just led to two damaged, immature souls clinging to whoever they could find. 

Maybe he would have never left, then. Maybe he would have stayed around to protect them until he rotted from the inside out.

He didn’t want to know, that much he knew.

Freddie gently touched each folded hand and whispered somewhere deep inside for them to have sweet dreams.

***

He was fast asleep on the couch when Anatoly came in, a few minutes after eleven. 

He stirred slowly as Anatoly pulled the blanket over him, whispering “Thank you.” 

“’s nothing,” Freddie whispered back with a yawn, eyes blurry in the dark as he pulled himself into a sitting position. 

Anatoly sat down beside him and put an arm around him.

“Let’s go up to bed, Freddie. Ya lyublyu tebya.” Anatoly took him by the hand and led him upstairs, taking a moment to flick off the light. No doubt he would sleep into the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Quoted lyrics, of course, by Tim Rice :) (From Jesus Christ Superstar)


End file.
